Since there's a thread going on future brewery openings, it seemed like a good time to get one on past openings, too.If we don't write all this stuff down now, we'll end up forgetting it, or at least arguing about it a lot.

This list was pre-approved by TBN so it shouldn't be too far off the truth.The arbitrary starting point is the current wave of craft breweries. The boom and bust of the 90s can be documented somewhere else.Cuckoo brewers are in, but brewers who never brewed in Ireland (like Strangford Lough) or never operated as a true business (like Big Hand) are out. The year is the first time somebody could drink a beer from that brewery, not the year the incorporation papers were signed.

DrJohn wrote:Dempsey's and Harty's are both listed as opening and "closing shortly afterwards" in 1982-1983 (source: Brewers & Malsters Guild of Ireland blurb from 1998).

Just seen this thread. As far as I can recall, Harty's opened in 1983. I was working as a brewer in Swannell's , a short-lived micro in Hertfordshire, England up until May of that year. Oliver Hughes also worked there for a couple of months, and asked me to come over to Ireland and work with him for a short period while himself and Liam LaHart set the brewery up. The brewery was just an empty industrial unit in May 83, but the equipment had been ordered, and the first beer went into local Blessington pubs around August 83 (I may be mistaken with some of these dates, after all it is thirty years ago, but they're not too far off). Dempsey's had been set up the previous year by Liam O'Dwyer (the publican of Mount Street) with a consortium of businessmen. In answer to another poster, Dempsey's were a stand-alone brewery in Inchicore. By June 83 their brewer had left, so myself and Oliver were working on secondment for Dempsey's, on the beer production side. I left Harty's in 84, and joined Dempsey's. I remember taking Dempsey's beer up to the Hilden beer festival in 84. I think Harty's closed in 84, and Dempsey's 85.But why not just ask Oliver Hughes?